So I’ve been browsing all these fancy theories on lost-theories.com in preparation for the resumption of Season 4, and I have discovered the truth when it comes to the search for this “missing piece” that makes the rest of the puzzle make sense. So why not share it with the world on the day that the episodes resume after the writer’s strike
The answer: there is no spoon.

That’s right.  There is no spoon.  There is no cow level. The creators of “Lost,” in all reality, threw some interesting elements that they wanted to take in a general direction, but they, themselves, didn’t exactly know how everything was going to piece itself together. Sure, they threw in some details to make it look like they knew what they were doing in Season 1, but I don’t buy it.

They may have pieced it together by now.  The more real picture probably has something like “okay guys, we know at the end of Season 4 that we want the cast to A) be off the island with the need to go back or B) get ready for the battle for the island, and then in Season 5 have them prepare to go back, with Season 6 finishing it off with the Oceanic crew re-taking the island.”  Then, they throw together the details and the theories about the island’s strange “properties” in a very sandbox format that can be shaped with the minds of the online theorists.

IMO, the creators of “Lost” are relying on the online theory community (such as this site) to generate compelling theories that they can then, in turn, pump through the focus group machine and end up with a final product.

It’s a smart thing to do, as the minds of the internet are collectively smarter than that of the creators.  And we know the details have changed from the original conception, since Kate was originally going to be the main savior of the wreckage, not Jack (see wikipedia’s Lost page).

Call me cynical, but I bet it’s the truth.

Perhaps it makes it all one big con, which is a recurring theme in the series.  The developers make a sandbox concept, and the online community shapes all the details with their theories, and they profit from it.

If it sells, it sells…

I’ve tried to categorize and provide description on the embedded YouTube clip, but it reformats my site to have the content borders stretch the width of my screen.

So this is the explanation:

I was testing ways to capture sound coming from any computer source into Cubase.  I found a way to route through my mixer and get it to record.  For my internet audio source, I typed in YouTube.com in my URL browser, and the link to this video came up (watched the link from a blog when the story broke).

I recorded the audio, imported it into Reason via NN-XT sampler, added a little vudu, and voila.

I have started a page of links on a wide range of categories here. I am still figuring out WordPress, so I currently don’t have an internal page menu in my sidebar. Thus I have placed the links in my “blogroll” link section for now.

I was able to watch a few parts of a friend’s Reason 4.0 to see what I’m missing with my version 3.0.

I came across the fix for the problem that I have been having, which I was unable to find from different forums. The prevailing wisdom was to right click a device and “Lock To X-Device.” The only problem was that I wouldn’t be able to play any other devices.

So this is my first tutorial for Reason, and I have included screenies to aid those like me who need a little extra help…

My Setup:

First things first…

OS: Windows (also run Mac, but screenies are on Windows)

Reason: Version 3.0

MIDI Device A: M-Audio Trigger Finger (this takes some setting up in Enigma. There’s a good tutorial here for TF users).

MIDI Device B: M-Audio Keystation 49e (poke fun all you like…)

Step I)

I’m going to assume you’ve got your program running with the desired virtual sound devices already engaged for your song. You have both of your USB MIDI controllers plugged in.

A) Now select “Edit->Preferences” (Mac Users select “Reason -> Preferences”)

B) A pop-up menu will appear. Select the “Control Surfaces and Keyboards” option from the drop-down menu.

C) Make sure all of your devices are added. If they are not both displayed on this screen (see my Device A and B are my TF and Keystation), then you must select “Add.” A menu will ask you for your manufacturer, and then you must select from the given options which product you own. If it is not there, you must then select a generic keyboard option, then have it find the device from the USB devices drop-down menu below.

D) Make sure there is no “Master Keyboard” assigned. If there is one, you will see that, when you select that device, the greyed out “Make Master Keyboard” button (see left) turns into an option that says “Use No Master Keyboard.”

E) Make a mental note of which device you want to use for Device A and B (or however many you’re using). I have the two, so I have Device A as my TF and Device B is my keyboard). This mental organization will help you out in the long run.

Step II)

A) Navigate to the “Advanced MIDI” option from the drop-down box (we’re still in the Preferences menu).

B) Select your “Device A” in the “Bus A” drop-down box. Mine is my Trigger Finger (TF)

C) Select your “Device B” in the “Bus B” drop-down box. Mine is my Keystation 49e.

D) Exit the “Preferences” menu.

Step III)

A) Navigate to the Reason Hardware Interface. For most people, this rack item is minimized at the very top of your virtual rack. Maximize this, and it will look like the screenie displayed below.

B) Make sure you have selected the “Bus A” button (see Arrow A), which will allow you to assign your Device A.

C) Now play some keys on your device. You should notice a red light indicating the Hardware Interface is reading the note value (see Arrow B), and you will also notice that the Hardware Interface will show the volume levels (see Arrow C).

D) The critical step is to find which channel lights up when you play a key. Select the drop-down arrow on this channel (for me, it was Ch 10), and then select the sound device you want this particular controller to play. In my case, it was the Redrum.

Step IV

A) Select “Bus B” (Arrow A in the diagram below).

B) Repeat step III.B, making sure to note which channel lights up (Arrow B) and that you are indeed getting sound (Arrow C).

C) Select your sound device of preference (Repeat step III.C). In this case, I wanted to play the Malstrom with my Keystation keyboard.

Voila! You should be all set to go. This worked on both my Windows and Mac platforms, when the other methods didn’t seem to quite work out for me.

I hope this helps many of you solve your problems. Please leave comments to let me know if this was of assistance to you.

NOTE: you must make sure that you don’t have a channel selected within your sequencer to play. For example, if you click the keyboard button next to the left of the Malstrom 1 channel’s record button, then you have the potential to play both the Redrum and Malstom at the same time. If that’s what you want to do, then great. But if you’re having that problem, it’s because you’ve got that button pressed in the sequencer window.

I’ve been using Reason 3.0 for a while, and I have never been able to get two different controllers to trigger two independent Reason devices simultaneously.

So, the question I am trying to answer is how do I play two or more Reason tracks and devices at the same time with different keyboards?

I have an M-Audio Keystation (the lowest rent version), and an M-Audio Trigger Finger running into my (new) MacBook Pro laptop.

My web resources said to simply plug in both and set up the devices (Preferences>Devices, then select the MIDI control surfaces in the drop-down menu).  From there, I tried both configuring my keyboard as the master (TriggerFinger as non-master), and also later switched to having no master.

With my keyboard as the master, I created a Redrum drum device and a Subtractor synthesizer device.  You’re supposed to right-click the desired device (redrum for me), then click “lock to device” from the pop-up menu.  If you have a keyboard assigned to a master surface, this will automatically assign the “slave” device to trigger the Redrum.

In a perfect world, the Trigger Finger would then play the Redrum, with the Keystation keyboard playing the Subtractor.

However, after playing with both the Redrum and the Subtractor tracks as the active recording track in the editing window, the Trigger Finger wouldn’t play anything at all.  If I assigned the Redrum track to be the active playable track, then the Keystation would play it, but not the TF.

When I went back to manage my MIDI devices and selected to not have a master device, I was then able to assign the keyboard to the Subtractor and the TF to the Redrum.  This time, nothing played, no matter what I tried.

I have posted the problem on a few forums, and others have had similar problems.  Any help would be most appreciated, and I will post a follow-up of I figure out how.

The solution may just be to buy Reason 4.0 …

>.>

I had to re-install WordPress due to a file tweak that went bad, so the original posts are back up, though with a newer date.

I updated the site to have a new welcome page as the index, but I’ve got to figure out how to make the black background extend all the way down to the bottom of larger screens (you’ll notice the border stops on anything but a small laptop).   I’m going to try to fix this soon.

Let it be known that this site was born Tuesday, February 18, 2005

Here’s a picture of tonight’s lunar eclipse taken through a Canon XTi with a telephoto lens.

This is the token first post to this site. This site is under development and will soon turn into both a showcase and a resource for the digital arts.